As I have already said, this treatise deals with the politics of virtue: it postulates an ideal of these politics; it describes it as it ought to be, if anything at all can be perfect on this earth. Now, no philosopher can be in any doubt as to what the type of perfection is in politics; it is, of course, Machiavellianism. But Machiavellianism which is _pur, sans mélange, cru, vert, dans toute sa force, dans toute son âpreté,_ is superhuman, divine, transcendental, and can never be achieved by man--the most he can do is to approximate it. Even in this narrower kind of politics--in the politics of virtue--the ideal never seems to have been realised. Plato, too, only bordered upon it. Granted that one have eyes for concealed things, one can discover, even in the most guileless and most conscious _moralists_ (and this is indeed the name of these moral politicians and of the founders of all newer moral forces), traces showing that they too paid their tribute to human weakness. _They all aspired_ to virtue on their own account--at least in their moments of weariness; and this is the leading and most capital error on the part of any moralist--whose duty it is to be an _immoralist in deeds._ That he must not exactly _appear to be the latter,_ is another matter. Or rather it is _not_ another matter: systematic self-denial of this kind (or, expressed morally: dissimulation) belongs to, and is part and parcel of, the moralist's canon and of his self-imposed duties: without it he can never attain to his particular kind of perfection. Freedom from morality _and from truth_ when enjoyed for that purpose which rewards every sacrifice: for the sake of making _morality dominate_--that is the canon. Moralists are in need of the _attitudes of virtue,_ as also of the attitudes of truth; their error begins when they _yield_ to virtue, when they lose control of virtue, when they themselves become _moral_ or _true._ A great moralist is, among other things, necessarily a great actor; his only danger is that his pose may unconsciously become a second nature, just like his ideal, which is to keep his _esse_ and his _operari_ apart in a divine way; everything he does must be done _sub specie boni_--a lofty, remote, and exacting ideal! A _divine_ ideal! And, as a matter of fact, they say that the moralist thus imitates a model which is no less than God Himself: God, the greatest Immoralist in deeds that exists, but who nevertheless understands how to remain what He _is,_ the _good_ God.... 305. The dominion of virtue is not established by means of virtue itself; with virtue itself, one renounces power, one loses the Will to Power. 306. The victory of a moral ideal is achieved by the same "immoral" means as any other victory: violence, lies, slander, injustice. 307. He who knows the way fame originates will be suspicious even of the fame virtue enjoys. 308. Morality is just as "immoral" as any other thing on earth; morality is in itself a form of immorality.